Quick Study: Jenny Kuper on children in armed conflict

Fighting someone else's battle

JENNY KUPER is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, based in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She has worked as a consultant for UNICEF and for the International Committee of the Red Cross on a study on international humanitarian law. She is the author of “International Law Concerning Child Civilians in Armed Conflict” (1997) and “Military Training and Children in Armed Conflict: Law, Policy and Practice” (2005)

The figures for the number of children affected by conflict worldwide are staggering.

Yes. UNICEF’s 2011 estimates for the previous ten years show that an estimated 20m children were affected by armed conflict, mainly as refugees. Of these, 2m died as a direct result of conflict, 6m were disabled or seriously injured, 1m were orphaned or separated, thousands were killed by land mines and over 300,000 took part as combatants. By the end of 2013 the UN estimated that over 7,000 minors had been killed in Syria since the start of the conflict there. What I want to emphasise is that this impacts on everyone, including countries like the UK, when children come here as refugees and asylum-seekers. There are probably thousands of children at school in the UK who come from conflict-affected countries, some of whom have been combatants.

The figures are so huge and so depressing that it’s difficult to think about.

Well, it is considered by some to be one of the success stories of the UN—the work it has done on children in armed conflict. Around 15 years ago it was hardly mentioned, but now there is a special representative on the issue, Leila Zerrougui, and a monitoring and reporting mechanism called the Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict. And there are regular debates on the subject within the Security Council. But it’s not just a talking shop. They look at the countries responsible for the worst violations against children in terms of deaths, recruitment and sexual violence and they draw up a list of shame, go to those countries and work out an action plan, which involves things like removing children from the armed forces or imposing specific sanctions on people.

And are people prosecuted?

Yes. The first ICC case was against the Congolese military commander Thomas Lubanga and, in fact, the only thing he was charged with was using children under 15 as combatants. He was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

It sounds like a drop in the ocean though.

There are problems with these courts and they're not a panacea. But having worked on this for 20 years now, it’s incredible to see individuals, once considered unreachable, plucked out of a conflict and brought before a court. It is a huge change—there is a growing awareness that recruiting children as fighters is no longer considered acceptable. At the grass-roots level, truth and reconciliation commissions in places like Rwanda and Sierra Leone deal with child fighters in the local community and that has perhaps been more effective.

It must be hard to gauge how responsible the child is when they might have been brainwashed, manipulated and so on.

There have been issues around that. In the Lubanga case they had some former child soldiers giving evidence, and that evidence was discounted because the court felt it was unreliable. Some concealed the truth because they had been influenced or intimidated or didn’t want to have their identity known.

There is some discussion about what is meant by “child”, is that right?

Under current international law dating from the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child is generally considered to be anyone under 18. That’s quite a high cut-off in certain countries in certain contexts. It leads to the misconception that child soldiers are a new thing. They actually aren’t, but what is new is the idea that anyone under 18 is a child. It’s not a recent phenomenon or an exclusively African problem. This has happened in most armed conflicts throughout history. There is now a new categorisation coming into use, “the young adult”, someone who might be aged from 15 to 25.

The words "child soldier" are rather frowned upon now too, as children can participate in conflicts in many different ways, including as cooks, messengers and so on. We use the phrase “children associated with armed forces or groups”. It’s a mouthful but it lacks the connotations of the word "soldier". All these children, whatever the level of their participation, are in the category of potential targets. In countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where children are increasingly being used as suicide bombers, they come to be perceived as legitimate targets by opposing forces.

We’ve been discussing boys and young men, but what about girls and young women.

Yes, girls of course can be combatants too. And linked with the issue of armed conflict is that of sexual violence and the impact of that on girls and women, as well as the spread of HIV/AIDS. If you look at Congo the incidence of violent rape is completely out of control. It was also a very prominent feature of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. But sexual violence does not only affect girls and women, there is a more hidden problem of the rape of boys and men.

Has that not always been the case?

Yes, but the levels at which rape is happening in places like Congo are staggering. The majority of women in the conflict-affected areas have been the victims of sexual violence, gang rapes and public humiliations—people being raped in front of their families. This involves children as victims but also as perpetrators. It is now a major feature of many armed conflicts and of post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Article 39 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child is specifically about the right of the child to be rehabilitated after an armed conflict. This might involve outside intervention, or people within the community working with the child in whatever way is culturally appropriate.

It’s depressing but it’s also hopeful. Steven Pinker has pointed out that there is a decrease in violence generally and I attribute that partly to international law, starting with the 1949 Geneva Conventions. These efforts, which might seem so minute at the time, do gather momentum. It’s not considered acceptable any more for an army to directly target civilians or kill prisoners of war (though of course it still happens, as in Syria). I find it more heartening to be involved in the process than to read about it and feel that it’s all so awful. It’s really important to see children in these conflicts not just as victims. Many of them are incredibly resilient, are survivors who come through it. They do not necessarily constitute a traumatised generation beyond hope.

The link above reads Pacifying Police Units(UPPS) push away more than 3,600 kids from Rio drug
trafficking. The article in Portuguese states that some escaped to other favelas. However, knowing
Brazil's Human Rights poor record and extrajudicial killings......push away (afastam) actually
means killing some of them instead of arrest and rehabilitation.